Publications

These recent articles have been written by
members of our groups.Generally they
have already been published in our national bulletins.It is not possible to offer a translation in
all the languages, but summaries areplanned for this page when they are
available.The icon PDF links to the
complete article in the language indicated.

Two
questions are taken up in this article – What is the solution to the
ministerial crisis in the Roman Catholic Church and are formerly active priests
‘Ex priests’ or ‘Priests forever’? A
challenge is posed to the authorities in the institutional church. They must stop clinging to ancient traditions
and myths which are time and culturally bound – this is demonstrated both in
the case of marriage and ministries.
What is lacking in he latter case is the community aspect. Rather, reflecting on a more organic and
developmental model of creation, they must ordain the leaders in the
communities to preside at our Eucharistic celebrations and thus grant us the
space to become what we will become.

When one speaks of celibacy
and especially of its abandonment a very individualistic dimension is usually privileged. The author, a sociologist, attempts to go
beyond this dimension. The clergy is a class who can no longer claim any
prestige, even at the cultural level. So it is to celibacy that one goes when
trying to bring into play separation and distinctiveness. It is celibacy that
is given a real social function. Along with the papacy and the cult of the
saints the celibate becomes the unique criterion which distinguishes
Catholicism from other Christian confessions, and internally distinguishes
priests from laity.

The document "Kerk en Ambt" of the Dutch dominicans has
already instigated a good deal of debate by suggesting that the christian
communities confer the role of presiding over the Eucharist to one of their
members, even at the risk of being at odds with their bishop's approval, should
the latter refuse to grant it... It is indeed this "presiding over" that is at
stake: the New Testament does not offer any precise answer to this issue and the
first two centuries of the Church's history suggest that beside the presiding by
the ordained, other types be tolerated, such as "charismatic" presidings and
"temporary" delegations...

This article reflects on the Book of Psalms as a book of meditation on
the human condition and the relationship with God. Life's journey is presented
as a spiral upwards through disorienting crises to ever new visions of life and
its meaning. The message that we cannot ever return to where we were before is
applied to the crisis of ministry in the Roman Catholic Church.

The author
offers some personal reflections to those who are undergoing the bereavement of
loss as they move out of active ministry.
Ministerial priesthood is a continuing commitment, not the fruit of a
professional celibate clericalised status.
The God of biblical revelation calls us into newness but that
necessarily involves continuity and links with the past. These links lie within ourselves to
discover. The author shares what links
he did in fact discover.

Our
knowledge of God is incarnational – we know, not the Godhead, but only what we
experience of the power and presence of God in our world. In worship we celebrate the power and
presence in creation of the One who is the source of all truth, goodness and
beauty, In speaking of the ‘Trinity’ we
cannot expect our congregations to have the sophisticated knowledge of the
history of philosophy required for intellectual speculation. We can offer much more through the myths,
images and metaphors of our biblical text.

Those who
differ in any way from the express teaching of the magisterium are often
accused of being guilty of ‘a la carte Christianity’. Elizabeth Price, chair of MMaC, turns the
charge on its head by illustrating the highly selective approach of the
magisterium to matters concerning sexuality and celibacy.

Just when it accepts and authorises the ministry of hundreds of priests coming
from Anglicanism, for example, Rome continues to forbid Catholic married
priests of the Oriental Rite the exercise of their ministry in Western
countries, America and Europe. This is a measure, moreover, quite contrary to
what Vatican II laid down and even to the canonical law of the Oriental
Churches which attribute authority in this domain to the patriarchs concerned …

Comparing the proposed welcome to Anglican married clergy with the situation of
the clergy of the Eastern Uniate Rite, the author comes to the following
conclusions: to think that the priestly ordination of married men, former
Anglican priests, falls within the domain of dispensations from the rule of
priestly celibacy shows that, far from being willing to abolish the
disciplinary rule of priestly celibacy, the latin church is in fact hardening
its stance on the issue.

The gesture of welcoming Anglican married clergy raises many questions: not
least that of a certain understanding of ecumenism, that of “re-ordination” and
consequently how one perceives the future, that of the Roman Catholic Church's
tendency to be always in the right.

The precisions underlined by Antoine Fleyfal in Temoignage Chretien, as well as
his more recent article in Istina, draws attention to the type of trap which
might be laid for anyone expecting the abolition of compulsory celibacy to
follow on from the Vatican's open door policy to married Anglican clergy. He is
definitely correct, surely? However, this is also the perfect time to draw
attention to the compatibility of marriage and priestly ministry.

The incidents of paedophilia show clearly the contradictions and the systemic
weaknesses in the institutional church. Paedophilia enters into the
relationship between sexuality and power. Like a possessive mother, it seems
that our Mother Church would like to keep her children in an everlasting
infantile condition, just to show how much she loves them ---- An inbuilt
structure of paedophilia in the R C Church !! It is time to launch a powerful
movement to give back to Christianity its feeling of the liberation of the
sacred.

The group of married priests in Germany poses questions and gives this reply:
there is at least an indirect link between paedophilia and celibacy due
to the pessimistic and negative attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to human
sexuality. What is now urgently needed? First and foremost, honesty and
willingness to change. Secondly, a root and branch examination of the doctrine
on sexuality.

An exegete sums up in twelve lines the roots of obligatory celibacy in the
Latin Church. With regard to sexual abuses committed by priests he is calling
for a serious and, above all, independent enquiry.

The suppression of obligatory celibacy is only one of the elements necessary to
move forward to a new credibility for the Roman Catholic Church. In this “year
of the priest” let us have the courage to call into question the ecclesiastical
system, both theological and pastoral.

The movement “We Are Church” reacts sharply to the Pope's letter to the Irish:
unprepared to recognise his responsibility and that of Church structures, he
prefers to lay the blame on social changes or on secular modes of thought. The
attempt to incriminate a “false interpretation” of Vatican II and its programme
of reform is quite simply scandalous.

Married priests from the UK group reflect on the spate of publications in the
present crisis. No point in asking who knew what or giving any weight to the
Vatican conspiracy theories. The message is: look at yourself and what you need
to do to gain any credibility.

Giovanni Franzoni returns to the affair of Cuernavaca – this was a Benedictine
Monastery in Mexico where Dom Gregoire Lemercier called in the resources of
psychoanalysis to assist in the formation of novices, but which the apostolic
nuncio succeeded in suppressing. Is the situation going to change now? That
would be astonishing. The Pope's letter showed no evidence of any “internal
analysis” of the ultimate causes of the abuses by his priests.

The author fears that the Roman Catholic hierarchy will rapidly foreclose on
the issue and “pass on to other matters”. However, it is the whole subject of
sexuality, of emotional feelings, of bodiliness, of the obligatory nature of
priestly celibacy, of the place of women in the Church and of life's ethical
questions that requires to be re-thought. Each day “I see my church closing in
on itself a little more. It is less and less a home, it is becoming a
fortress.”

The promulgation of Coetibus Anglicanorum on
the 9th November 2009 poses a question to the European Federation of Roman
Catholic Married Priests – a glimmer of hope or a retrograde step? Update July 2010.

For decades, possibly centuries, men who joined seminaries at a young age and as they matured came to a realisation they weren't cut out for a life a celibacy went through deep soul-searching about whether to stay or leave. Those who left often slunk away into society and lived lives of comparative anonymity. Dr Joe Dietrich is one of them. In the lengthy paper he argues that often those who made the decision to stay and live out their celibacy suffered trauma also.We might all ask as we reflect on this paper if forced celibacy is good for the human soul? http://www.catholica.com.au/gc2/occ3/119_occ3_230513.php